About us

Queer south asian women – brown, beautiful and intelligent – live, work and play everywhere, just as successfully as anyone else. But in sri lanka we do have one problem that’s entirely unique to us: we can’t walk our own streets. Women in sri lanka – straight or queer – can rarely walk unconcerned on the road. Young men and boys constantly sneer and mock at us for no reason except that we are women. And we’re on the street. And street language uses aappa gahanawa – or ‘cooking hoppers’ especially to mock at lesbians, both real and perceived.

Everyone loves hoppers. Hoppers are an all-day breakfast delicacy made from fermented rice flour. Bowl-shaped thin pancakes with crisp white edges and, if you’re lucky, a sunny yellow egg in the centre. ‘Milk’ hoppers, another type, are wonderfully sweet.

And the aappathachchiya is the pan used to create hoppers.

Whatever the mocking metaphor is, it’s lost on us, although we often puzzle over it. Is it a reference to an activity or a part of the body? What do they mean? Do they even know? Here, we reclaim the word appa and celebrate it as our own.

Vak likes good food, good company, music, time alone and lesbians (not in that order). She also likes words – her most recent favourite word being ‘sapiosexual’ – and likes saying the word lesbian loudly.

Vatura loves water because it resists nothing, doesn’t understand the concept of time and always follows its own nature. She would like to retire so as to pursue her burning ambition to do nothing at all as soon as possible.

Varad was once straight but that was just a phase. Now she has a serious job that gives her the legitimacy to talk about sex and pleasure and watch people’s jaws drop. She wishes she could photograph their expressions for a living.

We are three queer sri lankan women who think.

Aappathachchiya is our blog.